RACING Honey Queen shows her toughness

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32958, 3 July 1972, Page 8

RACING Honey Queen shows her toughness

Honey Queen is one of racing’s equivalents of the little girl with the curl.

She won a 7f race by 11 lengths at Invercargill in May, but after three unplaced runs in the meantime she was well down on the list of fancies for the South Canterbury Jockey Club’s Doncaster Handicap on Saturday.

In winning the second leg of the TA.B. double hands down by two and a half lengths this North Islandbred mare showed she is highly durable material.

This was her thirty-ninth start for the season and the sixty-fourth of her career. For a four-year-old this represents some busy campaigning but the ease of her win on Saturday did not offer any suggestion of wear and tear. Next for Honey Queen will be a campaign at the Wellington winter meeting. Her lease will be up at the end of the month and she will not return to the South Island after racing at Trentham.

Honey Queen has now won eight races for Mr E. B. S. Grey, of Oamaru, and has

made useful contributions to a family record which is notable for the deeds of the champion, Beau Vite (31 wins).

Crown Law, a half-brother to Honey Queen, was one of the best two-year-olds of his year and continued to do well in the ranks of open sprinters. Honey Queen was the 11/10 favourite for her eighth win on Saturday and paid $19.85 to win. EASY WIN She completed a “straight” T.A.B. double worth $59; the first half of the combination was Riccarton’s Donnybrook Fair, winner of the Donald Grant Memorial by more than three lengths, and even that margin flattered those closest to him.

Donnybrook Fair, at four years, was the youngest in the field, and none of his elders had the talents to make a race of it with him once P. B. Smith angled him into a gap between Bellecko and Elvin Spark on his storming run in the straight. Donnybrook Fair was once considered a doubtful racing proposition because of stifle trouble. Now he must be regarded as one of the South Island’s bright hopes for the Winter Cup next month.

Present plans are for another start on the second day of the South Canterbury meeting next Saturday then a brief freshener before tilting at the feature mile race at the Grand National meeting.

Phillip Smith, who was also Donnybrook Fair’s partner when a close second to Pseudonym at Ashburton a week earlier, found Saturday his most memorable day in racing. Before winning on Donnybrook Fair he rode Diamond King and Michael Francis to easy wins in the first two flat races on the card. Supporters of this combination on the on-course double received $24.15 for $l.